The Bottom-Up Revolution

Chris Harris-Wimsatt went through a lot of hardship in his childhood. He went on to become an Air Force officer, an ROTC educator and worked for several major companies. He’s also a foster and adoptive parent to 20 children.  

Through it all, he’s been dedicated to serving others, particularly in response to the ways that he himself has been served. For example, as a young person, he was part of the Boys and Girls Club which was a guiding force in his life, and as an adult, he wanted to give back so he joined the board of the Boys and Girls Club where he lived and later became its CEO.  

In this interview, Chris talks about the ways that community supported him during hard times, which is what led him to his current project, creating an indoor market and food hall in his neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI—a space where he hopes neighbors can connect, find community and spend time together.

Chris typifies a strong community-builder who looks at the skills he has and asks how he can put them to work to strengthen his neighborhood from the bottom-up—empowering residents and business owners, transforming an underutilized space into a community gathering place, and all in a manner that is focused at the neighborhood-level.

Additional Show Notes

• North Ave Market website

• “Community and inclusion behind vision for North Avenue Market” from On Milwaukee

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Chelsea Lawson is a Strong Towns member who’s putting her data-oriented mind to work to make her city and other cities stronger.

Lawson has worked in both local government and private consulting, helping cities like Los Angeles and Miami use data to understand how things are working and how to make them work better.

What we especially appreciate about Chelsea is the way that she’s taken her passion for data analysis and found a ton of creative ways to make her town stronger using those skills. Whether she’s working on a professional project or just walking through her neighborhood, she’s doing the math on what’s going to create the best return on investment and steward local resource well.

In this interview, you’ll learn about how even the trash in your garbage can plays an important role in shaping the future of your city, and how you can tie personal goals with community betterment. Chelsea shows us that doing the math is an essential part of building a strong town.

Additional Show Notes

• Social Impact Calculator for public investment and policy decisions

• Optimal Self (life game) dashboard and instructions

• Clean Streets Santa Monica Community Organizing

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

In this week’s episode, we hear from two dedicated Strong Towns advocates who are working with their neighbors to fight a highway project in their city of Erie, Pennsylvania.  

Adam Trott is a Strong Towns member, an architect and a long-time Erie resident who’s passionate about seeing his city be financially prosperous for all residents.  Roland Slade is a newer Erie resident with media chops and neighborhood know-how—who has no less dedication to seeing his city be a place where everyone can thrive, regardless of which neighborhood they live in.  

Together, Adam and Roland are part of a community group called Connect Urban Erie, which is fighting a multimillion dollar road expansion project that would run a massive volume of cars along Erie’s waterfront—an area already dominated by a large highway.  Adam, Roland and their neighbors have been tirelessly advocating to instead transform this waterfront roadway into a space where people can safely walk and bike, and enjoy the beautiful asset of Lake Erie.

We know you’ll learn a lot from this conversation about Adam and Roland’s work in Erie. Make sure to stay tuned to the end where they share a ton of fantastic pieces of advice for all of you out there who might be working through similar challenges in your city. 

Additional Show Notes

• Connect Urban Erie website

• Connect Urban Erie instagram (lots of great videos here)

• “PennDOT Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem” by Michael Fuhrman (GoErie.com)

• “Skip the Highway; Build a Boulevard,” by Lisa Austin and Adam Trott (Erie Reader)

• “PennDOT’s bayfront plan fails to prioritize people,” by Maxwell J. Hentosh (GoErie.com)

• “Protesting Erie’s Bayfront Expansion,” by Natalee Stinebiser (The Gannon Knight)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

In this week’s episode, we hear from Alexander Hagler, an entrepreneur and urban gardener based in Milwaukee, WI.

Recognizing that his community in the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods of Milwaukee was not well served by things like fresh food access and other resources for healthy living, he founded a store called Center Street Wellness, which sells products for mental and physical wellbeing, mostly from local makers. The shop gives him a chance to craft a business around something he cares deeply about, as well as a chance for local, small-scale entrepreneurs to sell their wares in a storefront—something most do not otherwise get to do.

Make sure to stay tuned til the end of the episode, where we also feature a listener voicemail from a Strong Towns advocate sharing his short story of taking action. Send your own voicemail to rachel@strongtowns.org.

Welcome! Here's a little sample of what's in store for our new podcast, The Bottom-Up Revolution. We've taken the focus of our old podcast, It's the Little Things, and adjusted it based on your feedback.  This podcast will feature the stories of the Strong Towns movement in action.

Tune in next week for the first full episode and, in the meantime, please send in a listener voicemail sharing some small (or big) way you've taken action to make your town stronger lately. Email voicemails to rachel@strongtowns.org

We'd be deeply grateful for your feedback on this podcast—what sort of episodes you like best, how you access the show, etc.

Fill out our survey at strongtowns.org/survey and you can be entered in a drawing to win a free signed copy of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. 

Thanks!

Strong Towns member Karl Fundenberger reflects on the ten years since he joined Topeka’s bike community and shares how the Strong Towns movement has influenced his advocacy.

As we witness the fragility of centralized food systems amid Covid-19, this LA-based nonprofit has demonstrated how local food systems integrated in their communities have responded to meet the needs of their neighbors.

Learn how Strong Towns member and Louisville resident Shawn Reilly and his neighbors used a "vision block" to find the small bets in their neighborhood.

David Gorski—founder at Plan Together Community Map Platform—shares the inspiration behind Plan Together and how you can use it to make your own community stronger.